Author Archive

Many thanks to Tom Spurgeon for the chance to talk about my work on the recently published Howard Chaykin: Conversations. If by some chance you finished reading that interview and thought, “boy, I’d sure like to hear that guy natter on about Chaykin some more,” you might visit older posts like this one, this one, or this one. General comics-related content by myself and my esteemed co-blogger is collected in this category—everything ranging from weekly roundups to longer pieces about comics and politics. Our updates are sporadic these days, but check in when you can.

PF is proud to present Tim Jones’ interview with celebrated comics scribe Rick Remender, writer of Fear Agent, Uncanny X-Force, and an acclaimed recent run on Punisher, among other titles. Remender has been making headlines in the comics world for a high-profile gig coming up on the new Venom and on FOX News for his role as writer of the recently released Bulletstorm video game. Tim and Rick discuss punk rock, comics, and what the two have to do with one another.

All! I’m here to spread the word that there is a brand new Jack Butler book out right now: Practicing Zen Without a License. Here’s some of what the publisher’s website has to say about it:

Like zen, whatever you expect Practicing Zen to be, it will be different. Think of a source-book on the origins of zen, like the scholarly source-books that we use today to study zen’s origins in Chinese Buddhism and its coming to full flower in Japan. Such source-books are necessarily fragmentary, since much of the original writing has been lost. Now translate that source-book to the 25th century, and replace the fragments from China and Japan with fragments from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the only remaining records of how a version of zen (called Easy) took over the U. S. Throw in a wildly humorous and semi-science-fictional version of history, and spice it up with anecdotes about and utterances by fictional zen masters, who quarreled among themselves.

You can get it at Amazon right now. My copy is wending its way Baton Rouge-ward and I’m looking forward to diving in to a book that is sure to be strange and disorienting—in the very best ways.